It’s probably the most overused quote in tech writing… which sucks, because I’d really like to use it to describe how I feel about the Chromecast.

The Chromecast is deceptively simple: you plug it into your TV, then stream video and music to it from apps running on your iPhone, Android device, or laptop. The Chromecast itself has no remote; whatever device you’re streaming from is the remote. The Chromecast has next to no user interface of its own, either; it’s got a single screen that shows the time and whether or not it’s connected to your WiFi that appears when nothing is being streamed, but again, the device you’re streaming from largely acts as the interface. The Chromecast is a wireless portal to your TV, and doesn’t try to be anything more.

A Box Full Of Surprises

I’ve been thinking about it all night, and I don’t think I’ve ever been as surprised by a device as I am by the Chromecast.

The price? Surprise! It’s $35. Are you kidding me? According to Google, they’re not selling them at a loss. Even after accounting for the Wi-Fi chip, the CPU, 2GB of flash memory, the RAM, licensing the right to use HDMI, assembly, packaging, and shipping them to the states, they’re somehow making money selling these things for thirty five dollars. Sure, their profit margin is probably like, four cents – but that they’re not selling these at a loss at that price point is kind of absurd.

The setup? Surprise! It’s ridiculously easy. Plug it into HDMI, give it some juice (through USB, which most new TVs have, or a standard wallwart), then run the Chromecast app on a laptop to tell it what Wi-Fi network to connect to. Done.

App compatibility? Surprise! It’s already there on day one in some of the most notable online video apps, including Netflix and YouTube. I didn’t even have to update the apps – I just launched ’em on my phone and the Chromecast button was sitting there waiting for me. They’ve even already built an extension for Chrome that drastically expands the functionality of the device (though, in its beta state, it’s a bit buggy – more on that later).

Hell, even the very announcement of the Chromecast was a bit of a surprise. Google somehow managed to keep the Chromecast a secret until right before its intended debut, even with a bunch of outside parties involved. Netflix, Pandora, teams from all over Google, everyone involved in the manufacturing process – all of them were in the loop, yet nothing leaked until someone accidentally published a support page a few hours too early.

Now, none of that is to suggest that the Chromecast is perfect. It’s not! Not yet, at least. But its biggest issues are quite fixable, assuming that Google doesn’t look at the “overwhelming” sales of the Chromecast and say ‘Oh, well, screw this thing.’ And for just $35, the few blemishes it has are pretty easy to overlook.

Taking The Bad With The Good:

Video streaming quality is quite good (on par with what I get on my Xbox 360 or my Apple TV, at least) particularly when pulling from an app or website that’s been tailored for compatibility – so Netflix, Youtube, or Google Play, at the moment.

If you’re using the Chromecast extension for Chrome on your laptop to project an otherwise incompatible video site (like Hulu or HBOGO), however, video quality can dump quite a bit depending on your setup. It’s using your laptop as a middle man to encode the video signal and broadcast it to the Chromecast, whereas the aforementioned compatible sites just send video straight to the dongle, mostly removing your laptop from the mix. When casting video tabs on a 2012 MacBook Air running on an 802.11n network, the framerate was noticeably lower and there were occasional audio syncing issues.

While we’re on the topic, the Chrome extension packs a bit of an easter egg: the ability to stream local videos from your laptop to the Chromecast. Just drag a video into Chrome, and it’ll start playing in a new tab. Use the Chrome extension to cast that tab, and ta da! You’re streaming your (totally legitimate, not-at-all-pirated-am-i-right) videos without bringing any other software into the mix. I tried it with a bunch of video formats (mostly AVIs and MKVs. MOVs kinda-sorta work, though most won’t push audio from the laptop to the TV for some reason), and they all seemed to work quite well, albeit with the lowered framerate I mentioned earlier.

Even within the apps that have already been tweaked for Chromecast compatibility, there are some day one bugs. Sometimes videos don’t play the first time you ask them to, instead dropping you into a never-ending loading screen. Other times, the video’s audio will start playing on top of a black screen. These bugs aren’t painfully common, but they’re not rare, either.

Fortunately, it’s mostly all good – and it can only get better

Even with a bug or two rearing its head, the Chromecast is easily worth its $35 price tag.

Remember, this thing just launched, and it came mostly out of nowhere. Those bugs? They’ll get patched away. The sometimes-iffy framerate on projected tabs? It’ll almost certainly get better, as the Chromecast extension comes out of beta.

Pitted against the AppleTV – or, in a fairer comparison, against the AppleTV’s built-in AirPlay streaming feature – the Chromecast’s biggest strength is in its cross-platform compatibility. Whereas AirPlay is limited to iOS devices and Macs (with limited support for Windows through iTunes), Chromecast will play friendly with any iOS, Android, Mac, or Windows app that integrates Googles Cast SDK. Having just launched, the Cast protocol obviously isn’t nearly as ubiquitous as AirPlay, either in terms of Apps that support it or in terms of other devices (like wireless speakers) that utilize it – but assuming that developers embrace the format (and really, they should), both of those things could quickly change. If developers support the protocol, Google could quite feasibly open it up to third parties to be integrated directly into TVs, speakers, and other types of gadgets. If that happens, AirPlay could be in trouble.

On the topic of its cross-platform compatibility: the experience on Android is a slightly better than it is on iOS, as Google has considerably more freedom on the platform; for example, apps that use Chromecast can take priority over the lockscreen, allowing the user to play/pause/skip a video without having to fully unlock their Android device. That’s just icing on the cake, though; for the most part, all of the primary features work just as well on iOS as they do on Android.

Conclusion

It’s one of the easiest recommendations I’ve ever made: If the Chromecast sounds like something you’d want, buy it. It’s easily worth $35 as it stands, and it’s bound to only get better as time goes on, the bugs get ironed out, and more apps come to support it.

[Disclosure: Google loaned me this Chomecast for me to tinker with, but it goes back as soon as my review is done. With that said, I liked it enough that I’ve already ordered one of my own.]

Docker, an app container service from the co-founder at DotCloud, and Salt, an open DevOps platform from the founder of SaltStack, were mentioned this past week at OSCON as two of the most exciting new open-source efforts.

Complexity comes with the cloud and its fit with enterprise data centers. The Docker team calls this new world of services and devices the matrix of hell. The Salt folks see salvation in speed – perhaps to save us all from the hell that comes with heavyweight systems that require extensive resources and are slow due to being built when distributed systems were not as common as they are today.

Both projects are tied to the deeper complexity that comes now with what new DotCloud CEO Ben Golub and Co-Founder Solomon Hykes describe as a world that resembles a matrix, represented by rows of endless number of available services and columns that represent any number of devices where applications run. DotCloud supports the Docker open-source project.

Their emergence also represents the new reality about what can be described as the “agnostic cloud.” Sure, there’s a belief structure about cloud but there is no almighty allegiance to its power. Instead, there is an agnostic movement to make on-premise and cloud services accessible through a universe of providers and open-source services that run anywhere – be it a private data center or a public cloud service.

Docker

Docker automates the deployment of apps as a lightweight Linux container. The container can be built and tested on a laptop and synced to run anywhere. It can run on virtual machines, bare-metal servers, OpenStack clusters, public instances or any combination of on-premise and cloud offerings.

Docker does not port the virtual machine nor the operating system, which makes sense when considering that the infrastructure itself is becoming the operating system. The compute, storage and networking is already in place on a cloud service – the application just goes there to run.

The service avoids the issue that comes with moving virtual machines, which are not designed to move between clouds. So instead of moving the VM, Docker moves the code between the VMs. Most of the security is managed by the Linux kernel.

Hykes said in an interview last week that developers particularly like the capabilities to continually test and integrate app containers. This makes for simpler and faster methods for building applications that can run anywhere. For example, developers are using Docker to build next-generation platform as a service (PaaS) offerings. It’s a noteworthy development. Most PaaS providers have historically provided monolithic platforms to do as much as possible. With Docker, platforms can be built that leverage the services of different providers to create lightweight environments for building and delivering apps.

For more technical descriptions about Docker, there are some good resources here, here and here.

Salt

Salt is a new open DevOps platform built for speed. It is designed to use generic high-speed communication to move data out to nodes by doing parallel data processing. Generic commands get sent to the nodes with feedback coming back very quickly. Harvard University used it for their supercomputer clusters. Jobs that once took 15 minutes now take five seconds.

According to the SaltStack website, Salt can be scaled to tens of thousands of servers through a communications bus that orchestrates, does remote execution and configuration management as well as other tasks.

Salt is being used as a replacement for Chef and Puppet, the two leading DevOps platforms. It is now used by LinkedIn and Rackspace. Here’s an excerpt from a good analysis by Sebastian Kreutzberger, CEO of RhodeCode, an open source software configuration and management platform for Git and Mercurial:

Salt is like a mix of Chef/Puppet (defining states) and an easy way to communicate with machines directly (like with an MQ). The big difference to Chef is the architecture: the slave (called minion) does not pull for changes every bunch of minutes, which can cause weirdness, but has a standing connection to the master which allows instant changes and commands.

Noted often about Salt is its documentation, which has helped the community further develop the platform. Here’s an introduction to Salt by its creator Thomas Hatch:

Conclusion

The cloud and on-premise systems are starting to merge into one cohesive universe. OpenStack serves as a way to make data-center environments more elastic. Cloud services like Amazon Web Services represent the public cloud infrastructure. The PaaS providers are becoming environments for serving apps to these different infrastructures. These agnostic providers, such as Cloud Foundry, do not serve one cloud. They help developers serve multiple cloud environments.

The same is true for services like CloudMunch, which offers a continuous integration platform that can move code between different cloud services. CloudMunch Founder Pradeep Prabhu said this new universal world has three main characteristics:

There must be the choice to use any developer or operations tools with any PaaS for any IaaS/cloud or on-premise/private cloud.

It has to be workload centric. Whatever makes best sense for a given workload including tooling, patterns and practices and infrastructure/cloud for delivering the best results/roi for that workload.

It is the ability to define a customizable software delivery progression with all the checks and balances for both application code and infrastructure code with no lock-in to any tool, methodology or cloud.

Similar principles apply to Docker, which treats the app container as the way to deliver apps to the cloud or any other infrastructure. Salt also fits into this universal mentality.

The new world is not about universal control and beliefs in all-mighty systems. Open-source efforts like Docker and Salt are popular because they fit into this more flexible and agnostic view of the cloud and data center universe.

Following two back-to-back accidents in China believed to be iPhone-related, Apple has added a page to its China website dedicated exclusively to informing consumers about its chargers.

A message at the top of the page states that Apple has always placed the safety of its consumers as a foremost concern, and that all of its products, including the iPhone and iPad, must go through rigorous testing for safety and reliability.

The passage then reads (translated from the Chinese):

When you charge your iPhone or iPad, we suggest that you use all USB power adapters with correspondingly-labeled USB cables. These adapters and cables can be purchased as individual items from Apple and authorized Apple retailers.

Below the message, the page features detailed pictures of the power adapters for some of Apple’s latest devices, with specifications for the each adapter’s corresponding power cord and red arrows pointing to the official Apple guarantee labels on each device.

The appearance of the page, which is unique to Apple’s China site, is almost certainly in response to two life-threatening incidents in China purportedly involving counterfeit Apple device chargers. Earlier this month Ma Ailun, a 23 year old woman from Xinjiang, died tragically from electric shock when she allegedly used her iPhone 5 while connected to an unauthorized charger. Just days after that, a man from Beijing fell into a coma after allegedly inserting a third-party charger into his iPhone 4. Both incidents made international headlines.

Following Ma’s death, Apple issued a statement expressing condolences to the Ma family, and pledged to investigate the matter and cooperate with authorities.

By publishing the webpage, Apple is making a concerted effort to show support for its customers in a year in which it received several towel-whippings from the Chinese media. The company came under scrutiny in April, when the People’s Daily (China’s foremost party-mouthpiece newspaper) issued reports accusing the company of shirking on its warranty policy in China. The incident prompted Apple CEO Tim Cook to issue a formal apology.

In its latest earnings report Apple revealed that its revenues in China dropped 14 percent year-on-year, but this statistic is best understood as a temporary lull. The company remains bullish towards the Middle Kingdom, with Tim Cook stating earlier this year that China is Apple’s most important market, and that the company intends to double the number of Apple stores in the country within two years.

Analog camera and film specialist Lomography is taking its first steps in the digital photography space today with a Kickstarter campaign hoping to fund a new version of the iconic Petzval lens, designed specifically for Canon ED and Nikon F mount cameras.

The stylized piece of glass is a sight to behold, blending the original look and feel of the iconic portrait lens – developed by Joseph Petzval in 1840 – with a smaller, sleeker and contemporary package.

The lens was a popular choice with portrait photographers because of its artistic and dream-like effect on images. The subject at the center of the frame is sharp and in-focus, while the extremities are blurred with a surreal, circular ‘bokeh’ effect.

It’s far removed from almost anything else on the market, but the photos produced by the new Petzval lens are in-keeping with what Lomography has long stood for – warm, creative and unique images that can’t be replicated with a bunch of filters in Adobe Photoshop.

The compatibility with Nikon F and Canon EF mounts ensures that a pretty wide range of photographers with both analog and digital SLR cameras can take advantage of the new piece of glass.

Given that the Petzval lens is now pretty hard to find – it was designed to work with cameras in the 19th century, after all – Lomography’s incarnation is a pretty unique chance to experiment with an older and rougher style of portrait photography.

The analog camera and film firm is looking for $100,000 over the next 30 days to put the lens into full production. The first lenses are expected to be delivered in February 2014, although Lomography says they’re confident the first 1,000 units can be shipped by December this year.

The lens will retail for $499, but there’s an opportunity for the first 100 backers to snatch it up for $300. That figure slowly increases inline with the number of backer slots, eventually hitting $2,000 for a trip to Vienna with one of the first Petzval lenses off the production line.

Lomography has always pioneered analog photography, so to see it produce a lens compatible with digital SLR cameras is surprising. Nevertheless, it’s refreshing to see a company step away from the usual onslaught of high-end black and silver prime lenses and develop something with a little more heart.

We’ve covered the latest bits of the full-fledged console game Ride to Hell: Retribution but little has been said about the XBLA\PSN side game, Route 666. Along with the new trailer, we learn a little (just a tad) about the game.

Route 666 is set inside the same universe as Retribution but so far seems to have nothing else in common with it. Players control their very own band of asphalt warriors as they fight to control the famous stretch of roadway. The bikers can be positioned in strategic positions to overtake enemy packs, knock ‘em down to become the leader of the road. It’s basically a Road Rash type game with some strategy elements mixed in. Sounds good enough to me!

Ride to Hell: Route 666 is scheduled to hit XBLA and PSN this June. No exact date has been revealed nor a price point. I’d say though it will be about 1200 points or $15. Hit the break for the latest press release and the new trailer!

Grab your crew and take them on a thrilling ride: Deep Silver reveals new details on Ride to Hell: Route 666

April 25, 2013 – LARKSPUR, CA – Deep Silver today is putting the pedal to the metal with more details on the upcoming action game Ride to Hell: Route 666. In the world’s first real time tactics beat’em up, players will beef up their pack of road warriors, provide them with the right gear, and take them to the streets in a merciless battle for every mile of the legendary Route 66. The trip starts this summer, when the game is scheduled to hit the PlayStation Store, Xbox Live for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and Steam.Tactics are essential when up against a colorful cast of enemies. Players will be able to bark orders at their fearless gang members to bring them into the right formation on-the-fly with easy, accessible controls. Clever tactics will be rewarded, opening up enemy defenses and allowing you to get in on the action: as the leader of this lawless bunch, you can support your warriors at the front line or issue instructions from the back. Pick up and play action controls allow the players to get involved in the fight at any time. You’ll also be recruiting new members to join your gang, with each one bringing their own special abilities to a fight, from big bad bruisers to sultry medics.Ride to Hell: Route 666 is set within the Ride to Hell universe, a world of bare-knuckle violence, and rip-roaring motorcycles. Later this year the setting will be extended by two further titles featuring the unique and incomparable biker lifestyle; Ride to Hell: Retribution and Ride to Hell: Beatdown.Ride to Hell: Retribution tells the story of a lone rider, Jake Conway, a man with either a gun in his hand or a girl on his lap (and on more than one occasion both!). He’s on a merciless path of revenge against a brutal biker gang called The Devil’s Hand, armed to the teeth with an arsenal of deadly weapons to enact his vengeance on foot and on bike. The only law Jake answers to is his own. Hit hard, ride fast and leave ‘em in the dust June 2013 for Xbox 360, Windows PC, and PlayStation 3.The Ride to Hell universe will be rounded out with Ride to Hell: Beatdown, a rock’n’roll brawler set to light up the mobile space, on the go! More details on this title will follow soon.Ride to Hell: Retribution is developed by Eutechnyx, Ride to Hell: Route 666 by Black Forest Games.For more information about the Ride to Hell universe, please visit:Web: http://www.ridetohell.comTwitter: http://twitter.com/ridetohellgameFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/RideToHellGameYouTube: http://www.youtube.com/deepsilverhq

About Deep SilverDeep Silver develops and publishes interactive games for all platforms, seeking to deliver top-quality products that provide immersive game experiences driven by the desires of the gaming community. The company has published more than 200 games worldwide since 2003, including the critically-acclaimed, best-selling zombie action game, Dead Island . Upcoming titles include the side-scrolling arcade brawler, Sacred Citadel, the isometric action RPG, Sacred 3, the next game in the Dead Island franchise, Dead Island Riptide, Metro : Last Light and Saints Row IV . Deep Silver is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Media, GmbH, and includes the renowned development studio Deep Silver Volition, based in Champaign, IL. For more information, please visit http://www.deepsilver.com or follow us on twitter at @deepsilver.

Hey all you geeks, we’re back with a brand new giveaway! This time we have the animated adventures of everybody’s favorite stoner comedians, Cheech and Chong! Come along for the ride as the duo relives some of their greatest routines, only now in animated form and on blu-ray.

Everyone’s favorite stoner duo is back – and animated – in CHEECH & CHONG’S ANIMATED MOVIE, rolling its way into Blu-ray and DVD April 23 from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. Directed by Branden and Eric D. Chambers, this high-larious feature-length adventure is the perfect film to watch at home with your best buds!

CHEECH & CHONG’S ANIMATED MOVIE showcases the legendary toker jokers like you’ve never seen them before – in animation. Catch the buzz as their most outrageous routines and laugh-out-loud lines from their ground breaking Grammy Award-winning albums come to life, including the original Ode recordings of “Dave’s not here,” “Let’s make a dope deal” and more. With help from a bud-lovin’ body crab named Buster, Cheech & Chong “the masters of the smokin’ word” deliver the ultimate comedy high and give you the munchies for more.

Ready to get your munch on? Want this toking fresh blu-ray we have to give away? Hit the break and blast up that Rafflecopter! Enjoy geeks!

Having just played Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite back to back, I was prepared to be underwhelmed with games for a while. The aforementioned titles really raised the bar of what games can accomplish, and both totally blew my mind. I had visions of me falling into a gaming slump or at least a chance to play catch up with my DVR until Naughty Dog‘s The Last Of Us releases. Actually that’s kind of ridiculous considering how much I love gaming but the thought of bitter disappointment on my next gaming excursion did cross my mind.

Luckily for me, the fine folks at Deep Silver hooked me up with a copy of their game Sacred Citadel. Described in a press release as an action adventure hack and slash with RPG elements. I love a good hack and slash but throw in the added bonus of RPG characteristics and well, color me intrigued!

Sacred Citadel is part of the Sacred game series, and intends to serve as a prequel to the upcoming Sacred 3. If you haven’t played any of the Sacred games, fear not, Sacred Citadel is perfectly fine to dive right into for the uninitiated like myself.

Upon starting the game you are asked to choose a character class to represent you. There are four, Warrior, Ranger, Mage, and Shaman. Each has unique abilities and characteristics.

Sacred Citadel is presented in four acts and takes place in the world of Ancaria where the evil Ashen empire has enslaved the population. Their henchmen are the Grimmoc, whose job is to wipe out the Seraphim. It’s your duty to help defeat the evil Ashen empire, and that’s when the fun begins!

You start off with lowly weapons and very few skills. Throughout the game as you progress so does your character and weapons. Dual wield with a variety of artillery including Swords and axes, better weapons become available for purchase in the towns or are often dropped along the way by enemies. I found that every weapon dropped by enemies were always better than anything you already owned, which was nice unlike in Borderlands where often I discarded a gun only to find what I left behind was much better than the new one.

Speaking of Borderlands I often found Sacred Citadel to resemble the shooter, only without guns. That comparison also extends to the style of art used in Sacred Citadel as well as the RPG leveling up of characters and weapons. Sure it’s not as dynamic of graphics but this game is much smaller scale and is download only across multi platforms. With that being said, I am in no way implying that Sacred Citadel is not top-notch quality and I had a ton of fun playing it.

Sacred Citadel offers co-op for up to three players. Do your self a favor and bring along a friend or two because it really is much more fun. However, if you are a lone wolf type of gamer, Sacred Citadel still has much to offer. Co-op can be played locally or online. I did experience a bit of lag playing online co-op but nothing too tragic.

Gameplay is very fluid and combos are pulled off with a smoothness and ease that is essential to the brawler genre. Sacred Citadel does run a little short but considering you can purchase it for $14.99 on Steam and PSN which translates to 1200 Microsoft points, it’s a deal.

Sacred Citadel is available now on PSN, XBLA and Steam and was developed by SouthEnd Interactive with publishing rights being handled by Deep Silver.